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Much has been said in American media about Russia's annexation of Crimea....most of it misleading. Naturally, western leaders are outraged, outraged I tell ya', over Vlad Putin's bold moves in responding to "regime change" efforts by those same western leaders' in Ukraine. Go here to find out just how far afield U.S. media has led American audiences on this alleged Russian act of aggression.

As Juan Cole points out here, there's one genuine act of aggression, complete with a hostile annexation, which U.S. media and American politicians are never permitted to call an illegal, international act of aggression......

These territories (the West Bank and Gaza) were not awarded to Israel in the 1947 UN General Assembly partition plan. Israel had no legal claim on them. They were taken in a war (1967) in which Israel fired the first shot and so could be seen as the aggressor. Israel did not offer the inhabitants of these territories citizenship in Israel.

I think I'm going to launch an investigation to find out who is the best blogger in the world. I want the truth to finally come out. The People deserve as much.

In the investigation I will launch I will appoint my wife to lead the investigation. Why? Because nothing is more important to me, and the People, than having an objective investigation free from bias or conflict of interest.

They tell us that they work much, much harder than their lessers. Some of the more jaded ones even tell us they are doing "god's work. A few even refer to fellow Americans who point out the third world nature of U.S. income and wealth disparity gaps as Nazis.

They.....are the wealthy capitalists of our time, most of whom make more money in one day than ordinary citizens earn in a lifetime. Their key to "success"? Hard work and long hours.....and an undying adoration of what is called 'free market capitalism.'

There were a few readers of my Noah post from Saturday who wondered why I occasionally point out the ridiculousness of religious belief. Why pick on those who hold religious beliefs devoutly, I was asked. Why try to publicly ridicule, humiliate, or mock those devoutly held religious beliefs? Why would I intentionally seek to hurt the feelings of the religious by sharing the historical source of the Great Flood of Noah myth?

To begin to answer those questions I must first ask this question? How are beliefs in political ideology any different from religious beliefs?

Taxpayers in 14 states will bankroll nearly $1 billion this year in tuition for private schools, including hundreds of religious schools that teach Earth is less than 10,000 years old, Adam and Eve strolled the garden with dinosaurs, and much of modern biology, geology and cosmology is a web of lies.

Money well spent, right? Because in America today the most dangerous institution threatening all of humanity is modern science. When a unionized public school teacher is teaching young impressionable minds according to a scientific-based curriculum......there's very little doubt any longer that what that teacher is really doing should be classified as an insidious form of child abuse.

Sometime in the early 80's, as I was wrestling with Christianity, I came across The Epic of Gilgamesh. The Epic is amongst the earliest surviving works of literature in the world....written in the 18th century BC.

In general the political right in the U.S. favors the Citizens United ruling which most progressives believe gave our nation's wealthiest free rein to dominate our election campaigning system. The political right's argument, if that's what it is, is that money equals free speech and Big Gub'mint has no right to prohibit the exercise of speech.

Money does not equal speech. That's just crazy talk. Money PURCHASES speech and should not be confused with free speech, itself. But the point here is that the political right celebrated Citizens United as a victory for free speech rights.

Eleven years ago this month, the United States militarily attacked the middle eastern nation of Iraq. For the folks back home, our action of naked military aggression against Iraq was teasingly labeled "Shock & Awe." Iraq posed no threat to the U.S. and had done nothing to provoke the U.S. attack. Our borders were not being threatened by Iraq and Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11.

The UN refused to go along with our nation's worst act of aggression....but an orchestrated U.S. media propaganda campaign conducted in collaboration with key Bush/Cheney officials led Americans to favor the attack by a 3-1 margin.

More than one cocky Texas governor has explained the state's proud anti-government-interference-in-business tradition. Texas, by gum, is wide open for business, and don't you ever forget it. The one thing Texas conservatives hate....and I don't mean maybe....is big gub'mint regulations and restrictions impeding business in the state.

Tesla Motors.....cannot sell its upscale electric cars directly to consumers in Texas because of long-standing state laws protecting and regulating auto dealerships.

I refer you to this Politico piece today. The piece is entitled "The Rich Strike Back" and it is almost as disgusting as the title suggests.

You see, the rich few are under attack, that is, according to the rich few, and they have been very, very afraid that the unwashed masses, aka the undeserving.....might coerce elected officials to increase taxes on them. Well, by god, the rich few are fighting back and Politico is here to inform you about that fight.

Of all the nasty stuff anti-Obama elected officials have said or done, the worst, by far, is from GOP-governed states who have purposely shut out their Medicaid-eligible working citizens from participating in the ACA's Medicaid expansion.

While GOP-stage players spend millions feigning outrage over 4 American deaths at a CIA-outpost in a place no American even knew about until September, 2012.....those same GOP-players have knowingly and pre-meditatively plotted the easily avoidable, pre-mature deaths of thousands of American citizens right here at home.

I read at the Fox News website on a regular basis. It is important to me as a liberal to read what the conservative take is on any given issue. Although Fox's bias is almost always transparently obvious, and predictable, when it comes to the alleged "wrongdoing" by the IRS....the non-scandalous "IRS scandal".....Fox News has been exceptionally deceptive and misleading.

If you go to Fox News online, type 'IRS scandal' into the search bar there, you'll find that Fox writers purposely lie about the alleged scandal in each and every article. Yes, Fox has proven to be untrustworthy for anyone seeking the unvarnished truth about almost anything....but on the alleged IRS wrongdoing, Fox has become a relentlessly shameless deceiver of it's audiences.

"... I agree we should be reluctant to deploy military force aboard, but there's a vital role, just as Ronald Reagan did. When Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an Evil Empire, when he stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate and said 'Tear down this wall.' Those words changed the course of history. The United States has a responsibility to defend our values."

House Republicans are considering a bill this week that delays the enforcement of ObamaCare's individual mandate penalties for five years and uses the savings to prevent a cut in Medicare doctor payments for 10 years.

Didn't see that coming. Not sure whether this new GOP offering is the 50th or 51st attempt in the GOP House to delay or repeal the Affordable Care Act. Hard to keep track....there's been so many.

A veteran teevee pundit yesterday wondered why former vice-president Dick Cheney still makes the occasional appearance on corporate "news" media. I have an answer to that question.....but first, the background and the set up.

Way back in 2002, when the Bush-Cheney junta systematically ordered "mirror" sites built alongside of key commercial communications hubs enabling the NSA to secretly vacuum up all U.S. electronic communications without judicial or even FISA Court warrants.....the justification, as we learned years later, was "to protect national security."

Democrats have done virtually nothing for the middle class for three decades now. They're nearly as reliant on the business community for campaign funding as Republicans.

Yes.

There used to be many more liberals in Congress, now there is but a few. Noam Chomsky recently claimed that there is a case to be made that Richard Nixon was our most recent liberal president. Point being that political lines have shifted drastically over the last 30 years.....and that shift has continually been to the right.

Yes, it was a hate-fest. After observing these CPAC gatherings for a number of years, I can confidently state that the attraction for conservatives who attend each year is the guarantee that invited speakers to the event will deliver the hate they love so much.

Not every speaker, of course. After all, presidential candidate wannbees can't appear too hateful. But when CPAC speaker lists include names like Ben Carson, Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin, any attendee knows that no matter how big of an appetite they have for hearing the hate....that appetite will be satiated.

Knowing what is truth and what is not in our Information Age is not easy. To find out what is factual today, and what is not, takes persistence and time. Two qualities in short supply in our sound-byte and convenience-loving society.

In the Information Age now dominated by 144 characters-or-less Tweets by Twits rushing to prove how clever they are....thoughtful examinations of what is actually true, about virtually anything, no longer seem to carry much weight in a society that appears, more than ever, prepared to make snap judgments based on pre-conceived biases.

New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie was not welcome at last year's Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) gathering. You see, Christie's overwhelming ambition to be re-elected governor of his state with huge bipartisan support, (thus setting the stage for him being the most "electable" GOP presidential candidate in 2016) also included a big photo-op after Storm Sandy with you-know-who.....President Obama.

This time Ryan is announcing a GOP war on America's War on Poverty. Which, when you give it some thought, makes a lot of sense. You see, poor Americans have been able to scratch out an existence here in America with the help of all those non-Republican, anti-poverty programs passed into law when everyone who voted for the Democrats who initiated those programs were dirty communist hippies.

If you have been following the U.S. "news" purportedly attempting to explain the tense situation in the Ukraine, and specifically the Crimean peninsula, you have been absorbing the best propaganda 21st century America has to offer. The former Soviets would be envious.

Since before the Sochi Games, U.S. media have been constructing an anti-Putin, anti-Russia narrative for Americans to consume. It is important inside the Empire, as it was during the run-up to invading the sovereign country of Iraq in 2002-2003,....as it was when many key U.S. players worked frantically to pressure Obama into using military force in Syria.....to properly prepare U.S. "news" consumers for the next Empire expansion of "freedom."

I can not and will not defend statements made about the Affordable Care Act by President Obama. The fact that Obama may indeed have oversold the ACA, in my opinion, only reflects the President's seemingly unexplainable habit of trying to please both sides of any dispute or disagreement.

Furthermore, the Affordable Care Act, itself, is a tribute to Obama's all-consuming desire to please both sides, simultaneously. Liberals were pleased with the Medicaid expansion provisions of the ACA and the government subsidies for health exchange purchasers.....both policy advancements realistically addressing the real problem with American health coverage today.....the uninsured simply can't afford it.

On the other hand, Obama calculated that conservatives would be at least somewhat accepting of the "market based" part of his ACA plan. The health insurance exchanges were originally a conservative idea which would meet the threshold requirement of conservative ideology....."profits before people." Thus, a public option was excluded from insurance exchanges and Big Pharma was still free to charge ever higher prices under the "no bulk discount for government purchases" hole in the ACA.

While all eyes are on the local dispute playing out between the Ukraine and Russia right now, a situation, to be sure, not to be taken lightly....warmongers in Washington this week will be taking steps that they hope will undermine President Obama and lead the United States into a war with Iran.